Book Talk 1/11/19: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Amazon Blurb: In this stunning
sequel to the highly acclaimed paranormal fantasy–Daughter of Smoke &
Bone–Karou must decide how far she’ll go to avenge her people.

Art
student and monster’s apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always
sought. She knows who she is–and what she is. But with this knowledge comes
another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he
betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

Filled
with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices–Days of Blood
& Starlight–finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war
stirs back to life. While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land
of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of a battle: a battle for
redemption. But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dreams?

My Review: The
story begins with Zuzana and Mik trying to trace Karou’s whereabouts. What they
find, neither is prepared for. Karou has gone home to find everyone and
everything she loved destroyed—by Akiva. Love turns into hatred. Seeking
revenge, she begins to build an army to go against the seraphim, led by Thiago.
But Thiago still remembers her treachery in choosing Akiva over him. He sends
one of his chimera to spy on her. When Zuzana and Mik stumble upon her hideout,
Thiago uses them to threaten Karou. After Akiva saves his life, Karou is told
by Kirin, one of her own kind from Eretz, that Thiago is stoking anger and
distrust about her to all the chimera. It looks as if Karou doesn’t have a way
out. When Akiva tries to talk to her, she turns away, in league with Thiago.
But is Thiago the brute he was?

This was kind of
hazy in the beginning as to what was happening with the story as Karou is
missing for a quarter of the story. The beginning is about the search for her.
And for Akiva to think she died like her people. I liked how the story pulled
together though after that and the viewpoints of Zuzana and Mike, Karou, and
Akiva weave together well after that. It is a tragic and sad story but both Akiva
and Karou hold on to hope, even if it’s not at each other’s side.